Man gets 120 years for killing grad student

African Ph.D. candidate shot during robbery

November 10, 2011

A Cook County judge sentenced a man to 120 years in prison for the slaying of a University of Chicago doctoral student from Africa during a botched robbery four years ago.

Prosecutors said Demetrius Warren, 21, fatally shot Amadou Cisse in November 2007 while he and a crew of stickup men were prowling the area around the Hyde Park campus looking to carry out "licks," or robberies.

A jury in August found Warren guilty of first-degree murder, armed robbery and aggravated discharge of a firearm.

Judge Dennis Porter imposed the sentence.

Cisse, 29, a native of Senegal, had recently defended his dissertation in chemistry shortly before the slaying and was scheduled to be awarded a Ph.D., according to trial testimony.

His godmother, Czerny Brasuell, read a lengthy statement to the court at Warren's sentencing in which she said the murder left Cisse's family devastated. His mother "lives in a state of astonishment" while a brother struggles with "survivor's guilt," she said.